Vacation 2007 - Day 15

October 6

Had spent the night with Brad (a college roommate of a roommate) and family who are working with CrossWorld in Leipzig.

Saturday morning went to the men's prayer breakfast at church. One of the men, a Russian, had found a job a couple hours away. Unemployment in Leipzig is 20%, all the jobs are in West Germany. Drove past office buildings built after unification but most are still empty.

After breakfast toured Leipzig and the first stop was the Leipzig Central Station. The largest one-way train station in Europe. The trains leave the way they came in.

Second stop was the Church of St. Nikolai/Nicholas where the protests against the East German government started in 1989. I would have fired the person in charge of picking the paint colors. Nice organ thou.

Downtown Leipzig. It was rebuilt after the war because it was one of the cities firebombed along with Dresden. To add insult to injury Leipzig was captured by the First Army only to be given to the Russians a couple months later.

St Thomas' Church, we were chased out of the church because they were closing for lunch (or something) before we could see Bach's tomb. Cliff Clavin trivia, only 7 of Bach's 20 children survived infancy.

Germans know how to have fun with hay bales.

Germans also know how to roast a pig.

But the Germans do not know how to paint abandoned Soviet era apartment buildings.

Völkerschlachtdenkma, say that five times really slow. Fortunately it had elevators and I had plenty of Euro coins rattling around my pocket to pay for them. They are removing the black pollution patina from the outside.

Only one stairway to the top so there was a stop light. It was very narrow, I had to turn sideways to get thru parts of it.

Finally got to see what the Rented Hibma Estate Limo would do with the chauffeur's right foot against the firewall. GPS has the speed at 115 instead of the indicated 120. Would get another 6 mph out it for a top speed of 121 mph. The rented limo ran out of steam at 110 mph and the road had to be no hillier then flat to go faster. GPS

Only had five construction zones between Leipzig and Frankfurt. Every Autobahn I was on had a contruction zone. In the last picture the left lane crossed over the median use part the eastbound's lanes and while the right lane drove on the westbound's fast lane.

This chart shows that I was finally able get the average speed (82.5 mph) above my USA averages. Light Saturday traffic and a plenty of three lane autobahn allowed for 53 minutes of 100+ mph over three hours of driving. 1:38 spent going 30-39 mph, 11:08 going 40-49, 21:52 going 50-59, 23:40 going 60-69, 21:30 going 70-79, 27:34 going 80-89, 19:30 going 90-99, 34:06 going 100-109 and 18:22 going 110+.

To view GPS track in Google Earth
Click This Link and Select Download
In Google Earth Open 'My Places'
Click: 'IMPORT KMZ FILE'
Click: 'Open File...'
Select Downloaded KMZ file: 20071006.kmz

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